Black Vinyl Roof

[Ateball]

Hey guys and girls

Im planning on Blacking out my roof with vinyl M3 style and was wondering what would be the easiest way around it.

I reckon it would be a whole lot easier if i could get the antenna off so that i wouldnt have to struggle with cutting the perfect hole whilst the antenna is in the way.

How would i go about removing the aerial?

Thanks

Also, does anyone have any pics of a lightning blue VRX with the roof blackened so i can gauge whether or not id like to do it?

[ninjured]

i wrote this when i did mine, i got away with removing the two c-pillars and pulling the headlining and squeezing my arm up in it. 2011 evo


--------------

remove the 2 back pillar covers with the air bag underneath either side of the back seats, pretty much did this with brute force. they wont come off completely as they are held on by a black plastic strap. but you can squash the top of the seat down and twist it 90 degrees so its out of the way of the head liner.

remove the two plugs at the rear of the head liner holding it up. use a flathead screw driver and simply pop these off.

remove both rear overhead handles. just flip the plastic covers to reveal a screw and unscrew it.

pull the headliner out from the rubber door trim to allow it to drop a little further.

this is all i needed to have enough room to drop the headliner at the back and access the antenna base. be very careful not to pull it down too far its basically like cardboard and will crease if it bends to much. if u need more access id remove the centre pillars as well to drop it even further.

disconnect the antenna. there are two connectors for the antenna squeeze and unclip the white one and just yank out the black one.

use a spanner to undo the bolt holding the antenna up. remove the small bracket under that bolt.

then from the top wiggle the base of the antenna side to side until its free.

only removing these parts does make a very tight working area and id definitely recommend two people sitting in the back while doing it. One pulling the headliner down while the other dislocates their arm to undo the bolt.

removing the weather trim from the roof. there is about 8 clips on each side, locate the two pointy bits under the rubber with your fingers, this is the clip part. the points should be about 2 inches / 4 cms apart. press really hard in-between these two points and pull towards the side of your car. it requires a little bit of force but not too much. keep locating the points under the rubber and repeat for all.

you should now have a clean roof ready for vinyl.

[ninjured]

here are some other notes i had on the vinyl not sure of the source.


--------

We did remove the antenna completely (pretty easy to do), certainly made laying the vinyl much easier. We also removed the black trim pieces on the roof, just need to be very careful with those cheap green clips, they like to break!

The rear windshield area was pretty straight forward as there is plenty of room between the glass and the car to properly trim and hide the excess.

The more difficult part was the front. If you ever notice there is a very small rubber seal that fills the gap from the windshield to the car. What we did was take painters tape and peeled back the rubber strip by sticking the tape to the wind shield. This gave us the gap we needed to properly trim and hid the excess.


s for the size, roughly speaking it was 48x60. This gave us a nice amount of excess on all sides to trim and size accordingly.


121.92 centimetres
152.4 centimetres

THEMEMPHISFORCE
 

 
Join Date: Apr 2009
iTrader: (100)
Posts: 1,677

This is from my audio overhaul thread.

Pointers on the headliner!!!

Have a second person to help with this one, I couldn't begin to think of how much of a major PITA it would be to do on your own. We tired to get it out of the car and gave up and ended up working around it with it in the car while we put the dynamat in.

**Stuff to remove for headliner**

-All 6 pillars completely
-Two front visors, the clips come out with a flat blade screwdriver on either side.
-The front dome light..just pull, middle dome light...two screws.
-All 4 ohhh shit handles, 8 screws.
-Two plastic gray clips in the back of headliner a few inches from the rear glass, forgot these and almost screwed the headliner up big time!!!
-Pull back the weather striping in all the doors and it just falls out!!!

Note: Be very careful with it, the headliner will crease easily!!!

Once you do all of that, the antenna is held in with a 10 mm nut.
__________________

 
Join Date: Mar 2010
iTrader: (0)
Location: Irvine
Posts: 117

This is actually very easy to do. I recently did my roof on my Evo X so I only removed the back half. Just do exactly what AMI Customs said except it was a 22mm nut that was held on to my antenna and also 2 clip pin things that you squeeze in and push the antenna out.

I think it took me less then 10mins to do. And yeah the headliner is kinda like cardboard so it can crease very easily.

[Ateball]

Thanks for that man, very helpful!

Did you do the wet spray vinyl application?
I'm thinking it would probably make things a whole lot easier.

I was even thinking about doing half of the vinyl at a time so as to not get some sort of colossal bubble in the centre of the roof that i cant get rid of haha.

[ninjured]

yep spray bottle of soapy water reapplied as necessary. invest in a good squeegee. not a massive one. it was very easy but time consuming. i got the 3m gloss. looks so good i get asked about once a week if its a glass roof.

i definitely would not do in in two pieces. just do it in one and keep lifting it and pushing the squeegee till all the air bubbles are out. it is quite easy to move it around and lift once it is wet. then i used a heat gun to mold over the two lumps on either side of the roof (not sure if that an evo thing). easy peasy

[Glenn]

I'd take a look at the 3m 1080 material or some of the avery ez wrap stuff. purpose made for car wraps and helps deal with all the bubbles etc. Its a dry product that you can reposition multiple times and then lock it place with pressure when ready. If it gets stuck together or wrinkles, you can apply heat and it'll stretch back out nice and smooth.

I used the cheap stuff on my other car with the wet spray and it was a nightmare compared the proper stuff.

I worked from front to back, centre out.
Like Adam said, remove rear pillars and you can access the aerial, no need to remove the whole headliner. Spend the time on the prep work getting all the trim and gaskets off.

[ninjured]

glenn you found it easier to put on dry?? i dont even do small vinyl logos dry.

did you have to do it like this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFq_mJ7nMdE

[Dungogvolts]

Why not check this out
http://carscoop.blogspot.com/2012/05/di ... astic.html
http://www.ebay.com.au/sch/i.html?_trkp ... op=1&_sc=1

[Glenn]

the stuff ive seen and used said explicitly not to use the wet application method. It has built in channels for the air to release and kinda temporarily sticks it down. You can crumple it up in a big sticky ball of mess then just hit it with the heat gun and it pulls right apart wrinkle free.

Normal sign vinyl and logos like the club cj decal etc ya for sure wet method but car specific wraps are designed differently. I was able to wrap my old evo x replica bonnet with very little effort. I found that you need it to stick at certian points so you can pull and strech it smooth around corners etc. With the wet method, if you pull the whole thing just slips. And if you stick it by squeegee out the water, thats it stuck for good.

Plastidip would be cool but all it would take is one bird to crap on it and in the process of cleaning it you'd more than likely peel it off and have to re do it.


Closest i could find to a blue with black roof. I think it will look sick if you went for the black and blue theme

[Dungogvolts]

I myself have not used the plasti dip but there is a video on youtube showing how to clean it and they use a special cloth to wash it. The video is on the first link I posted.

[Ateball]

I didnt even saw your post, i have known about plasti dip for a while and ended up usin that for my roof.

It was fantastic! Really blew my mind at how easily it went on, came off and just how easy it was to work with overall.

Definitely a happy camper.

Check it out at
http://clubcj.net/viewtopic.php?p=258978#258978